Makings of a Banana Movement

Wanderlust.  A love for travel.  It takes you many places, sometimes unexpected ones.  It took me to a Del Monte banana plantation in Costa Rica.  In the hazy, drab and depressing banana fields on that warm January day is where this particular human rights story began.  However, it was not where my love and respect for people started.  At my 8th grade graduation, I was named Humanitarian of the Year for my work in service learning projects.  I have always believed in humanity.  We are all equals deserving of human rights - health, security, education and happiness.  There are no exceptions.

 I am privileged.  I know I am.  I grew up in Carson City, Nevada, close to Lake Tahoe, and spent my first 18 years there with an abundance of healthy food, academic opportunities, and loving relationships.  I had every luxury – hot water, a car to drive, summer vacations abroad, and elaborate birthday presents.  The privelaged trend has continued with my enrollment at Chapman University, a private Southern California school, and a semester spent abroad in Seville, Spain.  On my first trip to the third world – Morocco in the spring of 2007 – my lifestyle was put into global perspective.  The people in Morocco had, by U.S. standards, practically nothing.  They lived in clay houses, slept on floor rugs, and used their own two feet to walk around.  And yet, beautifully, they were genuinely and graciously alive.  Their streets smelled of dirt and blood.  They had filthy nails and scars on their faces.  They worked hard to sell their spices, chickens or leather in the markets because their daily wages determined what they could afford to eat that night.  Through it all, they smiled and welcomed us Americans as guests.  They offered us tea and good conversation.  I have never felt more content in my life than the day I spent sitting in the patio of a Berber friend drinking his Berber whiskey (sweet green tea) and laughing at Spanish jokes.  It was in this experience that I began to question my own living situation.  What have I done to deserve all of these luxuries?  I haven’t worked particularly hard.  I haven’t struggled to survive on a daily basis.  I haven’t even gone hungry for more than a few hours.  Mostly, I was simply born in the United States to an upper-middle class family.

With privilege comes responsibility.  My trip to the banana plantation brought this idea full-circle.  It is my responsibility, with the opportunities that I have received, to make a difference.  I must tell the story of those who do not have a public voice.  I will speak up.  I cannot sit back, having seen the things I have seen, and remain silent any longer.  I have chosen bananas because I have been there.  I have seen the lifeless fields and spoken to the exploited workers.  I have taken photographs of the poisoned waterways and miserable housing.  This is not my story, but the story of thousands of banana workers in Central America.  I hope that my words can help to empower you, the reader, to also speak out and work for change.  We, as humans, are in this fight for rights together.